Blog Stats

Top Clicks

Twenty fifteen … hit the ground sprinting

Over the holiday, Tina and I visited my parents in North Carolina.

We drove down two days before Christmas. Usually we leave on or the day before Christmas.

We left on Christmas eve eve because my brother asked if I would make it to his Christmas program at his church. He was asked to take a regular Christmas carol and make it his own. He was excited about what he was going to perform and would love it if we were in the audience.

Check the recording I did below:

During the Christmas program, he took “What Child is this” and made it his own. He took it to a different, other worldly level that I’m not sure many are even thoughtfully capable of.

Artistry knows no bounds and my brother is not exempt from that truism.

I uploaded the recording and you can listen to it below. The video is of the video screen. I didn’t want to be that douche that holds up his phone during a performance. But I felt it was necessary to document the performance.

If you listen closely to the orchestration, it’s phenomenal. I wish it had better fidelity, but it is what it is.

What’s behind door number 3? Well, Pat … it’s a brand new car!

One of our goals over the holiday was to look for a new car. Our car wasn’t in bad shape. In fact we loved it.

I decided about six months ago that instead of waiting for the car to wear out and become worthless, we should trade it against a new car.

The idea of waiting till your car is completely worthless to buy a new car is, quite frankly, a bad fucking idea.

So we came back with a Mazda CX-5. I’m not completely sold on this car. I like it, but don’t love it. I think the CR-V did a better job with using the space within the cab.

I believe we got a good deal on the car. After a day and a half of car shopping that includes the initial negotiations and bearing the sales tactics of car salesmanship, we ended up throwing up our hands in exhaustion.

Tina and i thought we were pretty savvily fighting the normal sales-guy pushiness. But we weren’t landing any deals.

We had a sheet of paper that had written negotiations on it. On it, we had an MSRP price of the car we wanted and all that one of the dealerships was willing to do for us, including how much they would give us for a trade in.

The deal on that piece of paper fell through as we asked for a price that the High Point dealer didn’t like. We took that same piece of paper to neighboring Greensboro. When a salesperson met us on the lot and went into a spiel, Tina stopped him and said, “Save your breath. We’ve been through this already.” Handing him the piece of paper, she said, “Here’s how far we got with the guys in High Point. If you can give us the deal, we’ll drive a new car off your lot. If not, we’re driving our perfectly good CR-V home next week.”

After credit checks and paperwork, and about two hours of sitting around, a sales guy came out and said, “You got it!”

And now … work work work!

We had a nice visit with my parents and family, but we had to get back to Chicago to start work on a couple of video projects. We’ve worked every day since New Year’s eve, and will likely not break until the third week in January.

Artistically, I’m in a negative space about video production. Twenty fourteen was the year of crappy videos for me. We experienced growing pains as we developed our photography business, we let video slide a little. This was, in a sense, well worth it. I love photography. But my first love has always been motion picture.

So 2015 is the year of the video. Or at least, getting back to where it once was.

2015 is also going to be a year in which I pursue the art of being more mindful. It is, at the moment, what my plans are.